Today in history
On July 24, 1567, Mary, Queen of Scots was forced to abdicate by Scottish nobles in favor of her infant son James, who became King of Scotland at the age of one.
In 1783, Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar (see-MOHN’ boh-LEE’-vahr) was born in Caracas, Venezuela.
In 1862, Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, and the first to have been born a U.S. citizen, died at age
79 in Kinderhook, New York, the town where he was born in 1782.
In 1866, Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War.
In 1915, the SS Eastland, a passenger ship carrying more than
2,500 people, rolled onto its side while docked at the Clark Street Bridge on the Chicago River; an estimated 844 people died in the disaster.
In 1937, the state of Alabama dropped charges against four of the nine young black men accused of raping two white women in the “Scottsboro Case.”
In 1952, President Harry S. Truman announced a settlement in a 53-day steel strike. The Gary Cooper western “High Noon” had its U.S. premiere in New York.
In 1959, during a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged in his famous “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
In 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle stirred controversy during a visit to Montreal, Canada, when he declared, “Vive le Quebec libre!” (Long live free Quebec!)
In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.
In 1987, Hulda Crooks, a 91-year-old mountaineer from California, became the oldest woman to conquer Mount Fuji, Japan’s highest peak.
In 1998, a gunman burst into the U.S. Capitol, killing two police officers before being shot and captured. (The shooter, Russell Eugene Weston Jr., is being held in a federal mental facility.)
In 2002, nine coal miners became trapped in a flooded tunnel of the Quecreek (KYOO’-kreek) Mine in western Pennsylvania; the story ended happily 77 hours later with the rescue of all nine.
Ten years ago: President George W. Bush, speaking at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina, sought to justify the Iraq war by citing intelligence reports he said showed a link between al-Qaida’s operation in Iraq and the terror group that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. A grand jury in New Orleans refused to indict Dr. Anna Pou (poh), who was accused of murdering four seriously ill hospital patients with drug injections during the desperate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, sentenced to life in prison in Libya for allegedly infecting children with HIV, were released after 8½ years behind bars. The U.S. minimum wage rose 70 cents to $5.85 an hour, the first increase in a decade.
Five years ago: In his first foreign policy speech since emerging as the likely Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney called for an independent investigation into claims the White House had leaked national security information for President Barack Obama’s political gain; the White House replied that the president “has made abundantly clear that he has no tolerance for leaks.” Actor Chad Everett died in Los Angeles at age 75. Actor Sherman Hemsley died in El Paso, Texas, at age 74.
One year ago: Thousands of demonstrators took to Philadelphia’s sweltering streets, cheering, chanting and beating drums in the first major protests ahead of the Democratic National Convention. Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. British rider Chris Froome celebrated his third Tour de France title in four years. Hollywood “ghost singer” Marni Nixon, 86, died in New York.
“I think all great innovations are built on rejections.” — Louise Nevelson, Russian-American artist (1900-1988).